


Dispatches from a life on the run

by cobweb_diamond



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-03
Updated: 2011-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-14 09:33:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/147851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cobweb_diamond/pseuds/cobweb_diamond
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eames can't understand why Cobb decided to partner up with someone so dull he apparently goes over CCTV footage in his off-hours. Eames and Arthur's first job together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dispatches from a life on the run

  
‘How do you feel about a trip to Boston?’ asks Cobb, voice crackling over the dodgy phoneline.

Eames sips his drink, surveying the street outside. ‘Unenthusiastic, unless there’s a hefty paycheck involved.’

Eames prefers to remain as close to the Mediterranean as possible. Being English is far more fun when you expatriate yourself the hell away from all that fucking rain.

Cobb chuckles. ‘Don’t worry, I wouldn’t call you otherwise.’

‘Who else is coming?’ Better not be bloody Paula. She’s about half an inch away from a crippling Somnacin addiction.

‘I’ve started working with a partner, actually. You’ll meet him next week.’

A partner? So Dominic Cobb had gone pro at last. Eames considers it for a moment. On the one hand, it'll probably be pissing it down the entire time he's in Boston. On the other, he's bored and he needs the money.

‘I’m in.’

Rome had been getting boring, anyway.

*      *      *

  
Eames gives little thought to Cobb’s new partner until he arrives in Boston, and hardly pays more attention once they’ve met. The man -- Arthur -- is an absolute vacuum of personality. He appears to have no interesting qualities whatsoever.

Arthur reels off information about their mark until Eames starts to feel his eyes roll back in his head in boredom. Eames can speed-read; he could be doing this by himself, and probably faster. There are only    
three people on the team   
, so why does this require a meeting room? There are reasons why he dropped out of school and embarked on a life of crime, and avoiding situations like this was one of them.

‘Dom told me about the job you pulled in Lyon,’ says Arthur.

Eames knows where this is going. ‘It won’t work,’ he says immediately.

Arthur frowns. ‘Why not? Royston’s seventy-five years old and alone. A shot at love could crack him wide open.’

Evidently emotions were not Arthur's forte. ‘Doesn’t matter. I can’t get him to love me in the time it takes to do an extraction, no matter how much groundwork we lay beforehand.’

‘You did it in Lyon.’

‘To a thirty-year-old choral singer. Not quite the same thing, though I’m chuffed that you think so highly of my seduction skills. Royston was a spook. He went to public school in the ‘40s, and spent most of his adult life keeping secrets from everyone he knew. He’s not the sharing and caring type.’

His eyes narrow. ‘Then what? If he hasn’t cracked under pressure by now...’

‘Arthur, Arthur, Arthur. I didn’t take you for a two-dimensional romantic. Well, perhaps two-dimensional...' Arthur glares. 'Anyway. There’s more to positive emotional triggers than love and acceptance. Royston’s very much of the old school: he might be living in a dingy flat in Boston, but his heart belongs to England. Hit him with Queen and Country and we’ll get what we want.’

‘We give him a mission?’

‘Not in the literal sense. He knows he’s over the hill so it won’t ring true. But if he thinks he’s giving us the information out of    
duty   
, things will go a lot smoother.’

Arthur taps his pen thoughtfully against his notes. ‘His handler, the woman who checks in on retired expats. She has a yoga class twice a week. Think you can bear to do some physical exercise for the sake of the job?’

Eames leans back in his chair. ‘I suppose it’s a good thing I’m naturally flexible.’

*      *      *

  
So, Arthur is    
competent   
, but Eames still can’t imagine why Cobb, who has a creative mind and is already a rising star in the business, decided to partner up with someone who appears to review CCTV footage for fun.

Then they go under for a practise run.

Cobb’s architecture is, as always, excellent.

‘Let’s see what you’ve got,’ says Arthur eventually, once they’ve done a run-through of their extraction plan. ‘How quickly can you change? I’ve never worked with a forger before.’

‘Instantly,’ says Eames, and makes himself change into the mark’s handler, sensible shoes and all. 

‘Impressive,’ says Arthur. ‘And the voice?’

‘Of course.’ 

Just for him, Eames forges into Cobb, a trick that’s come in useful on a couple of jobs in the past. ‘I even fooled Mrs Cobb with this one, once,’ he says in Cobb’s voice.

‘You did    
not   
,’ says Cobb, exasperated. ‘Change into Arthur if you have to show off. I don’t want to have to talk to myself. 

Eames looks Arthur up and down, making sure to copy his suit exactly. He straightens up, touching his hair to make sure it’s parted correctly.

‘That’s... not actually very convincing,’ says Cobb after a moment, sounding surprised. It is heartening, at least, to know that Cobb has come to expect excellence every time. 

‘Well, I haven’t had any practise with Arthur,’ Eames points out. He’s making excuses; that doesn’t happen often. 

‘I’ve seen you pull off a passable forgery after one day,’ says Cobb. 

‘I don’t look anything like that,’ says Arthur.

Eames turns towards his reflection in a window and is embarrassed by what he sees. The impersonation is amateurish, to say the least. The only explanation is that Arthur has managed to be so boring during their meetings that Eames couldn’t pay enough attention to forge him correctly, even after    
four days   
. 

After that, Eames makes certain to watch him as much as possible. 

*      *      *

  
Eames is more than a little peeved at himself for being fooled by someone who appears to have no human personality. He wonders where Cobb found him. CIA? NSA? Arthur’s love of research combined with his total absence of imagination says    
government agency   
to Eames, but his suits are far better than any fed’s. Feds are not snappy dressers; give them a million dollars and they do    
not    
spend it on Ferragamo loafers.

But Eames is not so gauche as to admit defeat and ask Cob outright. His previous negligence when it came to paying attention to Arthur is just embarrassing, and he makes an effort to make up for it during the final stages of their preparation for the job. 

The evening after their first collective foray into the dreamworld, Eames settles down in his hotel room and systematically goes through all the files on Royston, stolen from Arthur’s computer. By 3am he thinks he’s got a handle on anything Arthur might be tiresomely infodumping on him tomorrow, and goes to sleep. 

In the morning Eames watches him intently from behind his magazines, eyes lidded with false boredom. Arthur continues to lecture as if he thinks Eames doesn’t know how to do his own job, which is rich coming from someone who has never worked with a forger before.

Eames notices the way he swings on his chair when Cobb is talking; the way he does smile, occasionally; the fact that he eats doughnuts by sticking his finger in the filling and licking it off, a surprisingly childish gesture compared to Cobb’s love of healthy salads and green tea.

Arthur still doesn’t appear to understand that it’s not his job to    
tell   
Eames about the mark, something he must have got from Cobb. Cobb is always impressed by Eames’ results, certainly, but he also looks at it like some kind of magic trick rather than a skill developed from years studying the human mind. Eames is used to this sort of thing, of course. Most people are in awe of architects, but it didn’t take a genius to make a building convincing. Most of that comes from instinct, from the fact that everyone    
knows   
in their bones that stairs go up and bricks don’t fly into the sky and the interior of your living room is a comforting familiarity even when the rest of your world is a surreal nightmare. Learning someone to their soul, however -- learning to impersonate them so their closest friend couldn’t tell the difference -- Now    
that   
takes a mind like a lockpick.

In the afternoon, Arthur is still talking and sketching out diagrams on the whiteboard. Eames has always found it easier to understand dream-based time differences and spacial issues in his own head rather than from someone else’s confusing simplification, so he closes his eyes and concentrates on the way Arthur sounds. You can tell a lot about the way someone walks by the sound of their footsteps. Eames has to cater to all five senses when he’s working. 

‘Mr Eames! Are you paying attention?’

Eames opens his eyes. ‘I just had a sudden, horrible flashback to secondary school,’ he says. ‘You were talking about Royston’s work in the ‘70s?’

‘Were you    
asleep   
?’ asks Arthur suspiciously.

He ducks his head. ‘Rather a late night,’ he says apologetically. 

Arthur shoots a dirty look at Cobb, saying something along the lines of    
why are you making me work with this waster   
? ‘Any chance of you refraining from going out until    
after   
we’ve completed the job?’ he says sarcastically.

Eames picks up a magazine, just to see if it’ll make him properly annoyed. ‘It’ll be all right on the night,’ he says easily.

*      *      *

  
It    
isn’t   
all right on the night, but that’s not Eames’ fault.

*      *      *

  
After fifteen minutes wandering around Cobb’s imaginary city, Eames’ phone rings.

‘We’ve got a problem,’ says Cobb, when he picks up.

‘Bloody right, we have. I can’t find the mark.’

Eames is all dolled up as Royston’s frumpy post-retirement handler, ready to meet at a prearranged spot, but Royston is nowhere to be seen. It’s rather a waste -- Eames even went to the trouble of replicating her perfume. 

‘Meet us at the Irish pub on North Street. And put on a different face.’

Eames ducks into an alley to change into something inconspicuous, away from the watchful eyes of the projections. 

To his credit, Arthur barely blinks when Eames sits down opposite him at the pub, wearing a stranger’s face.

‘Where’s the mark?’ asks Eames.

Arthur gestures towards a man sitting at the bar. ‘Over there.’

The man is in his mid-thirties, sandy brown hair, bad shoes.

‘That’s the problem,’ says Cobb.

Well,    
that’s    
a turn-up for the books. ‘He thinks he’s still thirty-five? What year does he think we’re in? Because this place does    
not   
pass for the ‘50s.’

‘We don’t know. I suppose it makes sense that his subconscious wants to relive the old days. I can’t imagine he enjoys retirement very much.’

‘Well, my forgery’s shot, at any rate,’ says Eames. ‘The handler’s twenty years younger than him. Back to the drawing board?’

‘No,’ says Cobb. ‘If he’s unpredictable enough to show up at half his natural age, another extraction plan won’t help. We’ll just have to tread carefully here and play it by ear.’

‘I say you two go in as inside men,’ says Arthur, watching the mark with narrowed eyes. ‘We don’t need to change the plan completely, just switch roles. Eames can rope him in and Cobb can show up as a fellow agent. I’ll play enemy forces, that’ll speed things up and make him more likely to hand off the files. Something Cold War should do it. An information drop, maybe.’

‘Don’t you think I’d make a better antagonist?’ asks Eames. Arthur’s ability to think on his feet is a pleasant surprise, but Eames has doubts about his acting abilities.

‘How good are    
you    
at fending off angry projections?’

Eames raises an eyebrow. ‘I try not to let things get that far.’ It’s a matter of pride. If he’s being chased around by projections it means he’s not doing his job correctly correctly. 

‘Well, I’m going to screw with them on purpose. Royston’s mind is so paranoid it’ll probably cook up a likely scenario as soon as an enemy’s introduced. Then you two can run with that. Think Graham Greene.’

Eames must be looking just a little gobsmacked at Arthur’s transformation from glorified powerpoint presentation to master tactician, because Cobb is grinning at him. 

‘I told you he was good,’ he says.

*      *      *

  
After some rather over-the-top business with ciphers and passwords, they’re in. Or rather, Cobb is in. Due to the improvisational nature of their new plan, Eames had to reveal himself as a “double agent” to get Cobb into Royston’s office. Cobb is an excellent architect but he’s not what you’d call masterful when it comes to changing direction in a hurry. So now Eames is on the run until Cobb gives him the all-clear to shoot himself in the head and get himself out of this ridiculous James Bond scenario.

Eames is hiding in an office-block bathroom when he decides to bite the bullet (so to speak) and call for help. He’s used to relying on psychoanalysis and deception rather than his ability to run and jump over things. 

‘How the hell do I get them off my tail?’ he hisses, hoping he’s shaken them for long enough for his legs to stop cramping.

‘Run,’ says Arthur succinctly, sounding like he’s doing just that. Unlike Eames, who is crouched on a lavatory seat, gulping for air after jogging up god-knows-how-many stairs, Arthur barely sounds out of breath. Bastard. ‘Shoot them. It’s not rocket science, Mr Eames.’ Eames is no expert on Arthur’s emotional range (or lack thereof), but he sounds almost    
exhilarated   
.

‘You’ve been a wonderful help,’ he says sarcastically. ‘Thanks ever so.’

There’s the sound of what Eames assumes are gunshots on the other end of the line. ‘Get to Central Square. I’ll meet you. We need to stay alive until Cobb’s confirmed the extraction.’ Eames hears what may well be a    
laugh   
. ‘Evidently you need a babysitter.’ He hangs up. 

Eames gets to his feet, amused by Arthur’s need to get the last word. He wishes he could forge himself some better lung capacity.

Arthur’s arrival in Central Square is heralded by an oncoming horde of armed men. He reaches Eames with the projections hot on his tail, and drags him bodily into a sidestreet.

‘Oh, thanks a lot,’ says Eames. ‘Now I’ve got    
your   
lot of projections to worry about escaping, as well as mine.’

‘How are your hotwiring skills?’ he asks, getting his breath back. 

‘I know how to get a car going, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Good. We’ll need to get hold of something as new as possible once we’ve lost our tail. Royston’s mind is stuck in the 1950s, he knows fuck-all about evasive driving.’

‘So we need a modern vehicle. Got it.’ Eames swipes sweaty hair out of his face. ‘Anything else?’

A couple of their pursuers appear at the mouth of the alley, and Arthur shoves Eames back into the wall as they approach. Arthur slams one man’s nose up into his skull and kicks another in the solar plexus in the same time it takes Eames to pick himself up off the ground.

Perhaps it’s a little depraved to think so, but he can’t help but notice that Arthur looks rather attractive when he’s snapping a man’s neck. 

There’s a tear all down one side of Eames’ jacket, a painful bruise blooming on his ribs underneath. He pulls off his tie and throws it on the ground. The bloody thing’s been flying up in his face the whole time he was running.

‘That’s why you should wear a tie pin,’ says Arthur, looking a little more dishevelled than before as he tucks one of the projection’s guns into his belt. 

Arthur looks so self-satisfied that Eames can’t help but burst out laughing.

*      *      *

  
When it’s done, Eames opens his eyes to Royston’s bedroom, the old man’s face relaxed and set deep with wrinkles. He can see the shadow of the younger Royston there, though. He hadn’t got to spend much time with Royston, in the end. A pity. He’d seemed like an interesting chap. 

Arthur sits up beside him and removes his PASIV needle, coiling up the intravenous line and putting it back in the case..

‘Bloody hell,’ says Eames as Cobb gets up from the floor. ‘You never told me your new pointman was a ninja.’

‘You of all people should know about the danger of underestimating people,’ says Arthur calmly, shutting the PASIV case with a click. ‘All right. I’ll go out the front and you two can leave through the back once I’m gone. Cobb, I’ll see you on Thursday.’

‘What, no goodbyes for me?’ asks Eames plaintively, only half joking. He is horrified to realise that after all this he has actually    
enjoyed   
working with Arthur.

Arthur pauses in the doorway, smoothing down the front of his waistcoat. ‘Goodbye, Mr Eames. I suggest you invest in some firearms training if you want to work with me again.’


End file.
